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Murphy, solons should forget about meddling in high school sports

Posted: Friday, February 25, 2000

Because of the paltry salaries it pays, the state can't hire enough welfare workers, and neglected children are being abused or abandoned. The Chattahoochee River is routinely contaminated by untreated sewage from Atlanta. The state's prison system is overflowing with drug addicts and high school dropouts who can't compete in today's high-tech job market.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Tom Murphy, the most powerful individual in the state legislature, the man in a position to help solve these and other problems, is worried about the win-loss record of his hometown's high school sports teams.

Absurd!

Murphy, said to be a staunch supporter of Bremen High School, is backing a bill that would make it tougher for some private schools to compete with public schools.

Murphy claims that private schools go out of state to recruit skilled athletes, thus giving their teams an unfair advantage over those from the state's public schools.

His proposal would force private schools that enroll 1 percent of their students from outside Georgia, or 10 percent from outside their home counties, to compete in a higher class division than public schools of the same size.

Murphy complained that private schools laden with imported talent routinely come to Bremen and ''beat the soup out of us.''

''How can a little town like Bremen, with 900 students in all three school systems ... compete with a school that recruits from the New York Athletic Club?'' Murphy asked as he lobbied for support of his bill.

Fearful of incurring the wrath of the man who controls the flow of truly important legislation in the House, 129 representatives voted for the measure Wednesday, giving it an easy margin of victory.

That the matter even made it to the floor for a vote -- while other vital pieces of legislation are languishing in committees -- is ridiculous.

The fact that the Georgia General Assembly is taking up valuable time on a relatively inconsequential issue such as this sends the unmistakable message to our children that high school sports competition is more important than it really is.

There are other organizations, such as the Georgia High School Association, that have the responsibility for dealing with the questions of fairness raised by Murphy. That's where this issue should be resolved, not under the gold dome of the state Capitol.

Neither is there any mistaking the message, as one legislator pointed out, that it's not how hard you try, but who you know that sometimes influences outcomes.

Rep. John Wiles, who coaches baseball at a private school in Marietta, accused Murphy of using his position to get his way at the expense of students.

''You know what this bill tells them?'' Wiles said. ''It doesn't matter how good you are, it doesn't matter how hard you work. If you have someone more powerful in the state, they can take it all away from you.''

The critical issue here is not fairness in high school sports competition. There's a mechanism already established for dealing with that concern.

The issue that should concern most Georgians is the silliness of the state legislature micro-managing high school athletics when there are truly important issues that are being neglected.